


Among the fruits of liberty

by CoffeeWench



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adam is a little shit, Bickering, First Kiss, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Romance, T rating due to a couple of swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 11:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20965697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeWench/pseuds/CoffeeWench
Summary: They were in Tadfield again.“For a visit,” was Aziraphale’s excuse.“To see if the boy’s backsliding,” Crowley muttered, but only in the safety of London.





	Among the fruits of liberty

They were in Tadfield again.

“For a visit,” was Aziraphale’s excuse.

“To see if the boy’s backsliding,” Crowley muttered, but only in the safety of London. In Tadfield, however, he only nodded in agreement.

Arthur and Dierdre Young smiled at them with bemused politeness over their tea. Bemused politeness seemed their permanent setting, but this meant the miracle was working.

By now, they had forgotten quite how they’d met their longtime friends Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley - whom they still called by surname, despite all these years - but they remembered that they’d made them Adam’s godfathers ages ago. Such nice, well-established, sensible men they were (were they a couple? Nothing wrong with it, of course! It just would be nice for dear Brian to have some support as he grew up, Lord knew he wasn’t going to get much of it in Tadfield). Steady, reliable, good with kids, fellows you could trust with someone as precious as their son. Even their daughter, Sarah - twenty and exactly as twentyish as a twenty-year-old on holiday from Oxford could be expected to be - remembered them fondly and had greeted them with a muttered, “Cheers, lads,” on her way out the door.

It had been rather a large miracle.

Of course, not having had a decade or more to actually learn about one another, the conversation got stilted pretty quickly. The relief was obvious on all sides when they heard footsteps pounding down the stairs, followed by a “Hi, Mr. Fell, Mr. Crowley!”

They had, of course, excluded Adam from the miracle, not least because it almost certainly wouldn’t have worked.

“Come on! I wanna show you the fort.” The boy grabbed a hand each and tugged them to their feet.

Normally, Arthur would’ve scolded his son for the interruption and rudeness. Instead, he found himself chuckling around a biscuit and telling his visitors, “Oh, lucky! Even _we_ haven’t gotten invited to the secret lair!”

“Come _on_.” The tugging got more insistent, and every adult in the room yielded to that insistence without question.

An angel, a demon, and an Antichrist found themselves well down the village road, headed to Hogback Wood. The silence with Adam was more comfortable than with his parents. Part of it was each of them knowing where they all stood. Another part was that children didn’t much mind an awkward silence. You’d speak when you had something to say, but why waste the effort otherwise?

Adam had something to say. “If I ask you why you magicked my family, are you gonna say something like ‘It’s for their own good’ or ‘You’re just a kid; you wouldn’t understand?’” His tone started slow and pondering, passed into annoyed resignation, and didn’t even need to end with a shade of warning.

Aziraphale began, “Well, you see -”

Crowley, who actually was good with kids, asked, “How long of an answer do you want?”

Adam was not used to this sort of question from adults. “Er - short, I suppose.”

“Don’t want them thinking we’re kidnapping you. You know how it looks, two fellows in their fifties hanging out with an eleven-year-old. Doesn’t matter that _you _know it’s not like that. Makes it easier for everyone and does them no harm.”

“Sounds to me like you’re messin’ ‘em about.”

Crowley made one of his expressions, a kind of facial shrug. “Is a bit, yeah. S not malicious, y’know. ‘S not gonna harm them.”

“I don’t like it.” He didn’t sound angry, to his companions’ relief. He just sounded stubborn.

Aziraphale asked, “Do you… _want_ them knowing what we are?”

Crowley warned, “Historically, humans don’t tend to do well with regular… visitations.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’re _you._”

“They’ll be fine.” This time the tone was the kind of matter-of-fact that could only be pulled off by the Antichrist.

Another facial shrug. “Your call.” Both Crowley and Adam ignored Aziraphale’s faint noise of protest.

They went round the end of a split-rail fence (Adam simply vaulted it) into Adam’s beloved Hogback Woods. The ground was covered in fallen leaves, which, this far into winter, were ten centimeters of slick, ankle-turning walking hazard covered with a thin layer of crispness, for variety. They went their noisy way deeper into the wood.

Aziraphale made periodic soft noises. After the third, his companions glanced at him in concern. Aziraphale’s face was damn near glowing in the lowering light between the trees, bearing an expression of awe and peace. When he noticed their regard, he explained, “This place is just _overwhelmingly_ loved. You know how the town feels to me -”

Crowley didn’t really. Only by what Aziraphale said it felt like. But that was angels for you. Adam just looked confused.

“- and these woods are the most loved - most _cherished _place I’ve ever set foot in.”

Adam kept staring.

Crowley leaned over and muttered, “He gets like this. ‘S’n’angel thing. I shouldn’t worry.”

When they arrived, Crowley whistled in appreciation. It was a glorious welter of safety hazards and hidey holes, perfect for children who didn’t yet believe they really could die. It reeked of chaos and recklessness and a deep disregard for anything but the _now._ Crowley realized he might have the other-side-of-the-coin feeling to complement the well-loved atmosphere that Aziraphale felt - somewhat acutely right now, if his face was anything to go by.

“Oi. Angel.” He snapped his fingers under his friend’s nose. But politely.

Aziraphale started. “Oh!” he cried. “Yes, of course. Terribly sorry. Was miles away.”

“Why are you here, _really_?” Adam asked. He squinted up at the pair of them the way he’d eyeball any adult.

Crowley didn’t let Aziraphale even begin stuttering his way through a politely rambling, technically true answer. He just asked, “Why do _you_ think?”

“To see if I’ll end the world, for real this time.”

Well. Blunt, this kid. In the background, Aziraphale went forward with the politely stuttering ramble. He was ignored.

Adam frowned down at his trainers. Consideringly, he said, “Yeah, _might _work. You’re prob’ly the best shot I’ve got at keeping the Them and my family safe. I went bad once. Could do again.”

Crowley flailed backward a few steps and made the traditional _whoa whoa whoa_ gesture. “Look, I’m not keen on _another_ chance at killing a child. Once was enough.”

“I’m not a _child_.” In oh, so many ways. But that sentence had come straight from the heart of a regular, British eleven-year-old.

“I’m not prepared to face killing _any humans,_” Crowley corrected himself.

What Crowley was decidedly not prepared for was Aziraphale piping up beside him, closer than expected and in tones of manufactured innocence, “You mean _another_ human?”

“S’what I said.”

“It isn’t,” Aziraphale replied around the beginnings of a smile. It was the cherubic sort, the kind he got when he thought he was being clever or was about to say how delighted he would be to go out for dinner. “Have you, in fact, ever killed _anyone?_”

“Ligur,” Crowley growled. “With the holy water, remember? _I_ do.” Horribly. The smell alone featured in nightmares, along with Hastur’s horrified screams.

Adam interrupted, “Oh, right! I knew I’d forgot something!” His eyes flashed a brief red.

Crowley would have done his neck actual, medical harm if he’d been human, his head turned around that fast. “_What the Hell did you just do?_” [1]

Adam shrugged. “Now you haven’t killed anyone.”

“He was trying to kill me first!”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a shrug, which Crowley didn’t see due to grabbing his own head and scrambling in a tight, panicked circle.

“I hope you’re happy,” he hissed as his circuit looped him back to Aziraphale’s side.

Aziraphale offered another beatific smile. “Supremely.”

“Yes, another demon with a grudge back in the world! One who conveniently didn’t get to watch me fail to go the way he did! Just when we thought Hell and Heaven were going to hold to leaving us alone. _Brilliant!_”

“I _said_ don’t worry about it,” Adam said, annoyed.

Aziraphale made a soothing gesture while subtly getting between a panicking demon and the Antichrist. “Now, now. He just gets like this, is all. He needs to get this part out of his system.”

“But... _I_ said don’t worry about it.”

Aziraphale’s smile went strained. “Really, he’s a creature of habit, you see. Demon, Hell, stationed on Earth away from any allies, all that. Sixty centuries of not being able to trust anyone… It’s hard to change that all at once, even for an occult being.”

“He trusts _you._”

Aziraphale sputtered and went pink. He went pinker when Crowley snarled from behind him, “He’s earned it!”

“Well, I’m earning it now!”

Everything went silent[2] while Crowley stared at Adam and grinding his teeth. The boy stared back. The expressions were identical masks of worry and stubbornness.

In the end, Crowley jerked his gaze away. He mightn’t have if Adam had said any of the things he was considering[3] or pulled the puppydog eyes that usually worked on the Them’s parents.

With the detente established, Aziraphale hemmed and asked, “Er - what were we talking about?”

“Killing people,” Adam placidly replied.

“I’m _considering it,_” Crowley muttered.

“_Really_, my dear.”

Crowley flung his arms out. “What? I’m a demon! It’s what I’m supposed to do, remember? I’m responsible for sending loads of humans to Hell. Buckets of ‘em! Properly documented, too.”

Aziraphale added as an aside to Adam, “All the temptations, you know. They add up. Through history, he can probably claim, oh, fourteen or so.”

“_Angel!_”

Adam lit up. “Oh, right! What about angels, then?” Had they been paying sufficient attention, Crowley and Aziraphale would have noticed the look on Adam’s face, which had long since become instantly recognizable to his parents and got him shouted at a great deal. They, however, were not paying attention and were far too late to do anything about if they had been, anyway.

Crowley scoffed, “‘S my job.”

Aziraphale, wearing an expression that resembled Adam’s more than a little, said, “You were late to the great war. You didn’t smite anyone.”

“Well, smiting’s not my thing, is it? All temptations, me.” This was delivered with a leer at whispering distance from Aziraphale’s ear.

Aziraphale sputtered. “Name me _one_ angel you’ve seen between Eden and Armageddon who isn’t me!”

“I’ll do you two hundred better. Shall I remind you of the Nephilim?”

“You were in _China_ at the time! The only thing tempting those angels were their wives, poor souls! You weren’t anywhere near them.”

Crowley turned his face away again with a _hrumph_ and dramatically crossed arms. “Got credit for it, anyway.”

Adam grinned just a little maliciously. “So you’re no good at killing, an’ you’re makin’ a rotten case for tempting. What is it you actually _do?_”

After more sputtering, Crowley retorted, “I confound! Confuse! Throw people off their games. Distract ‘em. Weaken their de-”

“You lie,” Adam interrupted.

Crowley snapped both fingers and pointed at the boy. “That’ssss the bunny! _Lie_. I lie. S’ my job. I _lie._”

“Rubbish,” Aziraphale scoffed.

This time the sputtering took on a disbelieving, betrayed tone. “I lie _all the time_, angel. The memos, for Hell’s sake!”

“You lie all the time _badly_,” Aziraphale corrected.

Crowley felt hunted. He suspected he was starting to look it, too. He couldn’t even manifest the energy to sputter; he just started searching, futilely, for an escape route.

Reader, it should be noted here as a reminder that Adam Young, the once, current, and future Antichrist, was an eleven-year-old boy. Therefore, he craved autonomy, his attention span couldn’t always be relied upon, and all adults were stupid. On top of that, his changing hormones were making him antsy, _and_ his occult powers were really not helping him with his impulse control.

Adam saw a prime opportunity here to:

  1. Distract these two strange, well-meaning but ultimately stupid adults with one another in order to get them off his back
  2. Do a good deed because they _were_ well-meaning
  3. Stir some shit.

He crossed his arms and settled his weight on one side, as if he’d been waiting for hours. “Look, just can you kiss already and get it over with?” he demanded.

Angel and demon shot apart like the like ends of magnets put too near each other. That, and the offended sputtering that went with it, almost made Adam lose his cool. He kept it together, though.

“S’like watching Newt and Anathema,” he complained. “And about this time, they call each other names and kiss ’n’ make up, and that part takes forever. Just get it over with. If I wanted to watch grown-ups kiss all the time, I’d go hang out with _them_. They don’t have to come down special from London for that.”

Crowley protested, “It’s not like that!”

Aziraphale added, “Not at all!”

Adam groaned. He slapped both hands over his eyes and shouted, “Ugh, it’s _worse_! You haven’t even _said?!”_

Aziraphale tried to interrupt, “Adam-”

“Coz if you haven’t told each other yet, then you’re _not _gonna just get the kissing over with, and I have to listen to you argue all day and it won’t stop!”

Adam was really settling into the routine. He could feel the complaints settling into his bones. He could keep this up for hours.

“Told--!” Crowley cut himself off. Didn’t even need Adam’s input. He just kind of choked to a stop.

Adam. Kept. Going. “C’mon! I hear enough arguin’ with the Them! If I’d’ve known you hadn’t already admitted it, I’d’ve left you back with Mum and Dad! Why are grown ups so _stupid?_”

In the wake of this, the forest _actually_ went briefly quiet. The stream murmured, but that’s what it was built to do, by a larger authority than Adam, so that was all right.

Adam turned to Aziraphale with a look of confused disbelief. He said, “I thought he said you could _feel_ love.”

One thing that hadn’t been said but was true all the same was that Aziraphale, too, was a creature of habit. He, too, was a being built of six millennia of being unable to trust anyone. Besides, he was an angel; at the core of him was God’s grace. In short, he was _made_ of love. He’d never walked this Earth without experiencing a background radiation of love.

Except -

He turned a wide-eyed gaze on Crowley, who took an immediate step back, shaking his head. Aziraphale reassured him, hastily, “Not without your permission, my dear.” His voice went small and gentle and repeated, “My dear - _dearest_ -”

Crowley choked. He’d heard that tone before, wrapped around the phrase _To the world_, but never paired with _dearest_ and never directed at him, and these together held him motionless.

“_Do_ you love me?”

Crowley very nearly went full-snake at this.[4] _There was no safe answer_. Nothing that could get him out of this situation; nothing that could protect what remained of his heart; nothing to keep his dangerous secret without losing his angel. Nothing.

In the end, his brain loaded the demonic equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death, which had only happened once before, just before he stopped time to give Adam a last-minute pep talk.

And just as last time, Aziraphale spoke. And just as last time, what he said restarted Crowley’s brain.

“Because I love you - have done for so long. And I’ve been so - so _afraid_ for so long, and you’ve been so patient, and I’ve been just _awful_ to you - for ages, really -”

“Angel,” Crowley said, cringing at how tender his own voice was. It went unheard, as Aziraphale hadn’t stopped babbling.

“- and I know - I _know_ it might just be too late, but I can’t bear-

“Angel!” Crowley pinched the air at mouth height and shushed, also just as last time. Also, just as last time, it worked. “Angel, yes of course, I lo-- I love you. You _must _know. It’s - it’s not new. It’s not _changed_; it’s not too late - just breathe.”

“We don’t need to breathe!” The look of offended panic on Aziraphale’s face did something unspeakable to Crowley’s insides. Something soft and fond that would have made him resent himself if he could spare any emotion for it.

“But you can pretend long enough for him to say somethin’!” a treble voice broke in.

Angel and demon both turned to stare at the completely forgotten Adam.

He grinned up at them. “Sounds like you two’ve got loads to talk about. Should prob’ly go sort it out, yeah?” He waved a hand, and they went from staring down at twin points of hellfire in a cherubic face to staring at some familiar stacks of books.

“Cheek,” Crowley breathed in disbelief.

Aziraphale coughed and asked, “D’you think he remembered to send the Bentley, too?”

Crowley grabbed Aziraphale’s hand. And by _grabbed_ one means _held delicately by the tips of the fingers as if to apologize for the presumption and being ready to retreat for any reason whatsoever._ Almost inaudibly, he asked, “Did you… did you mean -”

Aziraphale’s hand turned in his and latched on, and by _latched on_ one means _latched the fuck on._ “Yes, Crowley! Of course-”

He stopped talking because it’s very hard to keep going when you’re being kissed.

Crowley had, in six millennia, daydreamed and sometimes nightdreamed every permutation of a possible first kiss with Aziraphale. This circumstance didn’t _quite_ match anything he’d considered, what with Antichrist-ish interference, but it was close enough.

It surpassed the daydream beyond belief.

Beneath his lips, Aziraphale made a soft noise, and it propelled Crowley backward fast enough to jerk the angel along by their still-joined hands.

“Sorry, sorry,” he babbled. “Sorry. That was too fast, sorry.”

Crowley had not specifically imagined a second kiss. He certainly hadn’t imagined it starting with Aziraphale yanking him into it and keeping him there with a firm hand on the nape of his neck. Yet here they were.

Aziraphale released him just enough to insist, “No. No, no, not too fast. I’m just catching you up. Just - just help me keep pace, will you?”

Crowley discovered that seeing one of Aziraphale’s shy smiles from this close was devastating in a way he’d never known.

“I’m not as brave as you.”

Because Crowley was still buffering from the smile, it took him a second to register that. Once he did, he reared back in disbelief. “I almost ran off to Alpha Centauri without you!”

“Mm hmm.” This came on the tail end of a smile.

“Threatened to abandon you to face Armageddon alone!”

“Mmm.” Aziraphale was staring at Crowley’s mouth.

“You had to try to shoot a kid because I just _stood there!_”

“Mm.”

“Angel, there is _nothing_ brave about me!”

This time, Aziraphale’s smile was actually blinding. He glowed. It stung, sort of. In a good way. He kissed Crowley again. When he pulled back, Crowley followed a little way, helplessly.

“You lie all the time,” he reminded Crowley. “_Badly.”_

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Downstairs, one reeking, disheveled, all-pupil disaster on two legs stared, gaping, at a face he never thought he’d see whole again. This new arrival - last seen as a puddle of damp clothes and unspeakable fluids - lifted both hands in the universal _whoa whoa whoa_ gesture. The chameleon on his head did the same.
> 
> “The boy said to tell -”
> 
> He wasn’t able to say more, on account of catching two meters of demon that couldn’t decide between squeezing him back into oblivion or pounding his back into a fine red paste. Besides, he couldn’t make himself heard over the swearing.[return to text]
> 
> 2 Except for the wind in the naked tree limbs above; the calls of winter birds; the distant sound of a running creek; the rustling in the leaf mould of squirrels making last-minute deposits or, as it were, early withdrawals. Look, nature is _loud_, all right?[return to text]
> 
> 3 To wit: 1) You’re so stupid. 2) First thing you said to me was, ‘That’s the one - kill him,’ and I’m trusting _you_. 3) I could just _make_ you.[*][return to text]
> 
> * Which: true. Which Crowley knew. Which entered into the calculations that led him to yield, since the boy _hadn’t_ done it.
> 
> 4 What stopped him was not being an actual idiot. It was early winter in England, and snakes and cold go very badly together. He had some dignity left, if precious little.[return to text]
> 
> * * *
> 
> Note on Nephilim: I used this as justification for wording. That's all. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim#Second_Temple_Judaism


End file.
